The most famous set of all? I have two versions, the larger is quite authentic but whoever designed the smaller decided that the pawns were two boring and substituted a piece based on the 'berserker' shield-biting Rook, and used for the Rooks a tower based on York Minster. Chacun a son gout.

The great populariser of 4-way chess was Captain Verney, who insisted that the Queens should all start on light squares. But Pritchard tells me that the Hughes-Hughes version, with Queens always to the left of the King, superceded it.

Inspired by the various efforts made to explain Japanese Chess (Shogi) by marking the pieces, I had a go at making a chess set along similar lines. Needs testing on a youngster, but I'm quite pleased with it.

This is the game most often known these days from van Leyden's painting (http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/courier/painting.html); there are both the old-style elephantine Bishops that hop two squares diagonally (like the al-fil in shatranj), and a modern Bishop called a Courier (Läufer, still the German name for a Bishop). The Queen is the old-school short-stepping ferz, and there are two extra pieces: a Mann (henchman), who moves like a King and is one of the most powerful pieces on the board (being able to mate with support), and a Schleich (sneak), who moves like a wazir, one square along a rank or file. The game was famously played for centuries in Ströbeck, but eventually died out there.

There were four obligatory moves to be made at the start: to advance the Rook's pawns and Queen's Pawn two squares each, then make a 'joy-leap' (Freudensprung) of the Queen forward two squares (not a move allowed on any other turn). I'd like to see Nunn's Courier Chess Openings!

A jar of bicoloured pieces, a stack of sticky labels and a colour printer, and you can reproduce (or invent) any variant chess game you like. Featured are: Courier Chess, Chinese Chess, Take the Brain and Mad Mate (aka one-board exchange chess).

Chess Quotes

"The scheme of a game is played on positional lines, the decision of it is, as a rule, effected by combinations. This is how Lasker's pronouncement that positional play is the preparation for combinations is to be understood."